Morgan Komichi is not the 2014 Chairman of the MDC – The Zimbabwean

Morgan Komichi

So, the Supreme Court has ruled that the MDC-T must revert to its 2014 or 2016 structures, is that correct? My recollection is that Lovemore Moyo, not Morgan Komichi, was the then Chairperson of the MDC-T, and only resigned in 2018. So if the Court ordered the MDC-T to return to its 2018 structures, why does Morgan Komichi think he is the Chairman. And why does Advocate Douglas Mwonzora concur with that fraudulent claim by Komichi. Or was it the Court which mentioned Morgan Komichi by name in its judgement?

This revelation about Komichi imposing himself as Chairman of the MDC before the demise of Tsvangirai, or the Courts imposing him as such, should be exposed and stopped. And Advocate Mwonzora is expected to be a legal guru who should understand better,and for him to really call Komichi Chairman is mischievous.

Mr. Lovemore Moyo is still alive, and very much part of the 2014 MDC-T structures. Dr. Khupe must call Advocate Mwonzora and Mr. Morgan Komichi to order.

Slow down, Slow down Advocate Mwonzora and Morgan Komichi, you have already prostituted the Supreme Court judgement by claiming that Morgan Komichi was the Chairman of the MDC-T in 2014. Your hands are dirty, gentlemen, and through your mischievous utterances, you may have rendered the Supreme Court judgement null and void.

Post published in: Featured

Morning Docket: 04.07.20

* A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by musicians who had their work destroyed in a 2008 Universal Music Group blaze. Maybe the defendants listened to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” to celebrate their victory… [Variety]

* The top lawyer at CVS Health was paid over $23 million last year. Clearly, I’m in the wrong field. [Bloomberg]

* An attorney who spent two years in prison for wire fraud has been reinstated. Those are some forgiving bar examiners… [CT Post]

* Attorney General Barr has suggested that judges should consider COVID-19 when making bail determinations. [Politico]

* If you have not yet seen Tiger King on Netflix, you should watch it immediately. Then read this interview with an attorney from PETA. [Hollywood Reporter]

* Apparently in Boston, New York Sports Clubs are called Boston Sports Clubs, and like in New York, members are suing because they are being billed while gyms remain closed. [Boston Globe]


Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

They Took Their Time, But They Got There — See Also

Top Law School Changes Course On Grading Policy, Gets With The Program

Hey! Look at that! Looks like University of Chicago Law School has at last caught up with the rest of the elite law schools and instituted mandatory pass/fail grades. Because, you know, there’s a GLOBAL PANDEMIC going on and there are actually more important things than law school grades right now.

As you may recall, two weeks ago (Oh God, was it only two weeks ago? It seems forever ago.) Dean Tom Miles announced that the school was maintaining letter grades and their curve. Student reaction was anything but supportive — indeed a petition, signed by 300+ current law students urged the administration to change course. And today Dean Miles sent an email to students letting them know that, for this quarter, the law school is moving to pass/fail.

Dean Miles’s email:

Dear Students,

On March 24th, I let you know that we would begin the term with the status quo on grading practices, and that we would continue to watch developments and make adjustments if the situation warranted. After much deliberation, the Law School will adopt a mandatory Emergency Pass/Emergency Fail grading scale for the Spring Quarter of 2020.

This policy was reached after much discussion among the faculty. Thoughtful and insightful input from students, employers, administrators, and accreditors, as well as the experience of our first week of remote teaching, informed these discussions. I appreciate the many students who wrote to me and others to express their preferences and offer suggestions. Views on this question varied widely, and there were many creative ideas for alternative approaches. The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented circumstance that presented equities and interests that are difficult to balance. It is clear that no solution will be perfect.

This decision will disappoint many students. The opportunity to receive grades under the Law School’s usual system was important to many students as they pursue personal and professional goals. For some students, the grading system factored into their academic plans over quarters and years.

These considerations must be weighed against the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has significantly altered the personal lives and living circumstances of many students. The unexpected and significant burdens of illness, family care, and economic distress threaten some students’ ability to participate in academic life in the usual ways. Any time our students face personal challenges, we seek to make individualized accommodations to allow them to continue their studies. It has become clear over the past two weeks that the extension of stay-at-home orders, the substantial uncertainty of the duration of the crisis, and the unusual need for accommodations make this school-wide change a compassionate step.

The Law School remains dedicated to a distinctive and empowering legal education. Our faculty holds itself and our students to a high academic standard, and our usual grading system is, in our normal operation, an important means of providing feedback to students on their academic progress. It has never been our only means of doing so, and during the Spring Quarter, we will continue our other ways of offering students meaningful feedback. The Law School’s commitment to academic excellence is an enduring value, and our temporary suspension of our usual grading practices will not diminish it.

I hope that the first week of Spring Quarter has demonstrated that the excitement and power of teaching at the Law School will be just as great in the remote format as they are in person. We wish that we could convene with you in our usual classrooms and clinic rooms. Our faculty have been working hard to transition to remote teaching, and I know that under the circumstances, you will bring your usual insights and thoughtfulness to class discussions, too. Our learning in Spring Quarter can be just as satisfying and engaging as it usually is, regardless of the technology or grading policy.

Even with the suspension of our usual grading practices, Spring Quarter may present challenges for students. The Law School will continue to offer new ways of making class content accessible to students who are navigating unanticipated obstacles. For example, recordings of each class will be available in Canvas, and many faculty have adjusted their methods for class participation. Students who are in need of accommodations or assistance will continue to work with Dean Todd and his team as you always have when the need arises. We also look forward to remaining connected with you through virtual coffee messes, student roundtables, and other events.

Irrespective of the grading policy, I know that many of you are concerned about the impact of the pandemic on your careers. The Law School will, of course, support you during this uncertain time as we always do. Our faculty will recommend you as enthusiastically as ever, and our Office of Career Services will provide its signature individualized guidance and extensive programming.

There will be questions on how the mandatory Emergency Pass/Emergency Fail system for Spring Quarter will apply in specific instances, and more details on the implementation of this policy will follow shortly. If this change influences your choice of courses in Spring Quarter, remember that the Add/Drop deadline is Friday, April 10, 2020 at 5:00 PM.

You have my best wishes for an intellectually engaging Spring Quarter and especially for safety and good health.

Sincerely,

Tom Miles

So now students at Chicago can take a sigh of relief, without worrying that balancing the craziness of COVID-19 with law school will tank their GPA. And yes, even with a semester of pass/fail grades, they can get a job.


headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

Hey, Can Someone At Harvard Law School Check In On Adrian Vermeule?

In the era of social distancing, folks can get a little stir crazy. Everywhere you look, someone is touting the new hobby they’ve taken up because of the pandemic that they would never explore without the enforced, alienating solitude. Everyone’s out here baking bread, learning to knit, developing feelings about Tiger King, singing from their balconies, or writing long-form editorials about the importance of embracing authoritarianism.

Harvard Law’s Adrian Vermeule decided to take on the last hobby with a column in the Atlantic titled “Beyond Originalism,” where he pretty much argued for turning over the judicial system to a bargain-basement theocracy. And then… said he didn’t? Or something?

To untangle this, let’s begin with Vermeule’s original argument which begins by praising the work that the empty signifier for contemporary conservative politics judicial philosophy known as “Originalism” has done to make aggressive right-wing legal principles palatable by framing them simply the understanding of that lionized generation of Constitutional Framers. But now, with the conservative stranglehold on the courts so complete that they’ve had to resort to nominating “not qualified” people just to fill all their vacancies, Vermeule believes “assured of this, conservatives ought to turn their attention to developing new and more robust alternatives to both originalism and left-liberal constitutionalism. It is now possible to imagine a substantive moral constitutionalism that, although not enslaved to the original meaning of the Constitution, is also liberated from the left-liberals’ overarching sacramental narrative, the relentless expansion of individualistic autonomy.” What exactly does that mean?

Well, part of it involves the need “to ensure that the ruler has the power needed to rule well,” a nod to authoritarianism more at home in Machiavelli than the Federalist Papers. And when it comes to defining what “well” means, you can see why progressive critics had some problems with all this:

The Court’s jurisprudence on free speech, abortion, sexual liberties, and related matters will prove vulnerable under a regime of common-good constitutionalism. The claim, from the notorious joint opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that each individual may “define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” should be not only rejected but stamped as abominable, beyond the realm of the acceptable forever after. So too should the libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology—that government is forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech, that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,” and so on—fall under the ax. Libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources.

It’s not all bad. Vermeule also envisions an iron-fisted bureaucracy that might stand up for exploited workers, protect the environment, and make people get vaccinated. Still, there are better justifications for that, like maintaining a functioning economy, than asking our Philosopher King to protect the people as his — and this person is almost definitely a him in this article — children.

Meanwhile, conservatives were also up in arms about this. In trying to resuscitate Originalism’s usefulness as a check on “conservative living constitutionalism,” Professor Randy Barnett penned a response to Vermeule that helpfully distinguishes Vermeule’s core Catholic integralism as putting him on the outs with a lot of mainstream Originalism loving conservatives who can do without all of Catholicism’s baggage of “caring about poor people.” But basically Barnett’s criticism boils down to “liberals, be glad for Originalism or conservatives would really run wild.”

But the FedSoc doth protest too much. It’s not as though there’s any empirical evidence from the last 30 years of jurisprudence to suggest “Originalism” posed any check — beyond requiring judges to develop a proficiency in sophistry — on conservatives enforcing their contemporary political views and pawning it off as “Original.” If they had a problem with Vermeule’s vision of an authoritarian bureaucracy dominated by a powerful, moralizing chief executive they haven’t shown it in the decades of reverence they’ve showed Unitary Executive theory and its evangelists from Scalia to Kavanaugh. Tying that dog to the “Original” public meaning of the Constitution requires sociopathic levels of cognitive dissonance denial.

Vermeule cited the recent decisions asserting an individual right to bear arms as evidence that Originalism isn’t really tied to anything but contemporary politics and Barnett acts like this is a sign that Vermeule is out to lunch. If “Originalism” is really about the original public meaning of the Constitution, the best evidence we have about the original public meaning of these words is that, as president, George Washington marched an Army to go kick the hell out of some people who thought they had an individual right to bear arms and everybody seemed pretty cool with that reading of the Second Amendment at the time. I mean, this is an actual quote from a lauded Originalist gun opinion “While considering materials that post-date the Bill of Rights by at least 75 years might stretch the term ‘original public meaning’…” Oof.

Originalism is sloganeering. In fairness, it’s a pretty effective slogan. It’s a better than anything its rivals to its left have come up with. What it’s not though, is a meaningful check on “conservative living constitutionalism.”

This whole thing was weird enough and then the weekend happened. After a couple of days of getting ripped by left-leaning and right-leaning critics alike, Vermeule wrote a blog post that he flags as satirical except it’s… not funny or ironic?

First, I am happy to inform the left-liberal critics that the piece was never actually intended to make a Dworkinian argument for reading the Constitution in light of moral principles of the common good. Rather it was intended to make a Dworkinian argument for reading the Constitution in light of moral principles of equality and freedom, as specified by the programme of the American Civil Liberties Union. (Sadly unoriginal, I know; the legal literature is replete with that kind of scholarship). Somehow, a global search-and-replace occurred, and the phrase “Equality and Freedom” was everywhere replaced with “Common Good.” That change inadvertently transformed the piece from a banal effort, safely mainstream within the legal academy, into a menacing harbinger of fascism.

Why is this satire? Another conservative hot take is that Vermeule is trying to undermine the left’s adherence to Dworkin by coopting it for authoritarianism. But then… is the original piece satire?

Second, I am equally happy to inform the right-liberals that the piece was never intended to criticize originalism.

Is this satire then? He goes on to suggest that Originalists are just button pushers who will betray the moral fabric of the country by adhering blindly to the Constitution as if there’s some hand-wringing Originalist out there going all Warren Court because of what the Federalist Papers say.

Could this whole thing have just been a swipe — planted in the very opening paragraph of the first piece — at the line “We are all originalists now,” a phrase that no one seriously uses and that Elena Kagan probably regretted seconds after she let it slip from her mouth. Could this whole thing be Vermeule’s long con that liberals are coopting Originalism just as adeptly as conservatives could coopt his straw argument vision of living constitutionalism? And if that’s the whole point, then it’s not really satire, it’s an explicit call to more nakedly pursue right-wing ideology through the judiciary lest liberals someday win a battle for what “original” means?

In other news, Harvard Law students are joining the push for diploma-privilege admission. I’ve been sympathetic to this, but after this window into Harvard Law School’s faculty I’m going to have to step back and question the value of that diploma.

Now that is satire.

Kind of.

Beyond Originalism [The Atlantic]
A Series of Unfortunate Events [Mirror of Justice]
Common-Good Constitutionalism Reveals the Dangers of Any Non-originalist Approach to the Constitution [The Atlantic]
When conservatives interpret the Constitution like progressives [The Week]


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Choose Your Own Adventure: 2 Possible Dates For Fall 2020 Bar Exam

(Image via Getty)

NCBE’s mission is to promote fairness, integrity, and best practices in admission to the legal profession for the benefit and protection of the public. That mission is more important than ever at a time when there is such great need for a competent and ethical legal profession to serve the public. It is with that aim in mind that we are seeking to ensure that the bar exam can be administered to as many candidates as possible in 2020.

To provide needed flexibility for jurisdictions and candidates, in addition to preparing materials for a July bar exam, NCBE will make bar exam materials available for two fall administrations in 2020: September 9-10 and September 30-October 1. Each jurisdiction will determine whether to offer the exam in July, in early September, or in late September.

We don’t yet know what the months ahead will hold. NCBE is being proactive and continuing to explore solutions for as many scenarios as we can anticipate. We are consulting with outside testing, technology, and exam security experts to consider various options and alternative methods of testing if the traditional group setting must be canceled or modified.

—  a statement from the National Conference of Bar Examiners regarding the upcoming Fall 2020 administrations of the bar exam in lieu of the formerly planned July 2020 exam. The NCBE has created a webpage detailing COVID-19 updates, noting their goal was to “ensur[e] that law students have every opportunity to become licensed so that they can put their legal education to work in helping those affected by this crisis.”


Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Stress Tests Still Happening, Banks To Get Special Treat If They Pass

Every Summer Associate Program Change In One Chart

The other day we pointed you to a list of the grading policy changes around the country (and Canada) to keep everyone up to date on the updates we’re putting out there as we get them. Information is coming in rapidly, but it’s nice to have a place to go back and look at everything in one place.

Now that updates to firm summer associate programs are coming in fast and furious, we found that Reddit once again has done the good work of gathering this under one roof before we did. We can’t stress how helpful this is, because we here at Above the Law are tracking layoffs, bar cancellations, grading changes, summer programs, SCOTUS arguments, DOJ shenanigans, and terrible law firm advertising all at once, so we’re glad there’s a chart like this out there.

In this case, it’s Redditor Hstrat maintaining the chart with updates to summer programs. To give you a preview of what Hstrat’s got, here are the Vault top 10. The rest of the list is here:

Firm Name Status Last Updated
Cravath (V1) Committed to SA program but likely delayed. Advances have been paid 4/3
Wachtell (V2) They plan to have a program; may be remote until safe to return; advances have been paid 4/5
Skadden (V3) Program will continue, will go remote if necessary. Exploring possible contingency plans if needed 4/5
S&C (V4) They expect start dates to be delayed, will update their summers when they know more 4/3
Latham (V5) Firm-wide offer of counseling services; Some locations guaranteeing pay/SA program, others no communication 4/3
Kirkland (V6) Considering options – email focused on health & safety concerns 4/1
Davis Polk (V7) Delayed Start; on 4/6 asked for direct deposit info of summers who requested advances 4/6
Simpson Thatcher (V8) Expect to have summer program, otherwise ambiguous email 4/1
Gibson Dunn (V9) Planning to adapt summer program to maximize the SA experience – reminder that they did not cut SA program in ’08 4/3
Paul, Weiss (V10) Remain fully committed to SA program – considering a delayed start 4/3

Thanks for keeping up on all this. We’ll keep putting out the stories as we ferret them out.


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Trump So Busy With COVID Response He Almost Forgot To Take Revenge For Ukraine Impeachment

(Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump has been very busy protecting America from COVID-19 the past week. What with his corona pressers to hype unproven drug regimens and constant tweeting — 14 and counting as of 1pm today — it’s a wonder he can find time to sleep. Luckily, he’d set an iPhone alert (probably) to remind him to take revenge on civil servants who failed to cover up his plan to extort the president of Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden last summer. So Friday night, Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson got the pink slip.

Atkinson committed the cardinal sin of applying the law evenhandedly to the president’s conduct. Last August, IG Atkinson received the infamous whistleblower complaint alleging that Trump was withholding military aid from Ukraine in an attempt to get that country’s president to announce a criminal investigation of Joe Biden’s son. Atkinson found the allegations credible and forwarded the complaint to then-Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire to be transmitted to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as required by statute. Maguire instead sent it to the White House, where Attorney General Bill Barr and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone contrived to bury it. And then … well, we all know what happened next.

Atkinson was appointed by Trump himself in May of 2018. And yet, Trump insisted at his Saturday coronavirus briefing that Atkinson, who left private practice at Winston & Strawn after the September 11 attacks to serve his country at the Justice Department, lacks the one essential qualification for the ICIG job: He’s not a “big Trump fan.”

I thought he did a terrible job.  Absolutely terrible.  He took a whistleblower report, which turned out to be a fake report — it was fake.  It was totally wrong.  It was about my conversation with the President of Ukraine.  He took a fake report and he brought it to Congress, with an emergency.  Okay?  Not a big Trump fan — that, I can tell you.

After which Trump demonstrated his deep respect for whistleblowers by opining that, “He’s a fake whistleblower. And, frankly, somebody ought to sue his ass off.”

Atkinson himself released a statement yesterday saying, “It is hard not to think that the President’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General, and from my commitment to continue to do so.”

He continued with a dire warning against politicizing the position of Inspector General and a plea to protect whistleblowers, ending with “a message for any government employee or contractor who believes they have learned of or observed unethical, wasteful, or illegal behavior in the federal government.”

The American people deserve an honest and effective government. They are counting on you to use authorized channels to bravely speak up – there is no disgrace in doing so. It is important to remember, as others have said, that the need for secrecy in the United States Intelligence Community is not a grant of power, but a grant of trust. Our government benefits when individuals are encouraged to report suspected fraud, waste, and abuse. I have faith that my colleagues in Inspectors General Offices throughout the federal government will continue to operate effective and independent whistleblower programs, and that they will continue to do everything in their power to protect the rights of whistleblowers. Please do not allow recent events to silence your voices.

On Sunday, Donald Trump forwarded the names of five additional Inspector General candidates to the Senate for confirmation. Presumably these nominees have passed the “big Trump fan” test and will be more to the president’s liking.

Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing [WH Transcript, April 4, 2020]
Statement of Michael K. Atkinson, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, on His Removal from Office [via NYT, April 5, 2020]


Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.